"WE cannot end this part of our work without speaking of the marvelous
privilege which God seems to have imparted to our Saint, namely, that
of protecting
mothers and children in the numerous dangers that accompany
maternity. There are some counties where there is not a mother who does
not have his picture and who does not devoutly invoke his name.

The special gift which God seems to have given His great servant for
cases of this kind was very frequently manifested even in his own
lifetime. It will suffice to mention the following facts:

A woman of Senerchia was about to die. In the desperate state in which
the sick woman lay, her friends had recourse to Gerard, who promised to
pray for her. Hardly had he done so when the tears of the family were
turned to joy.

As Gerard came out one day from a house at Oliveto, a young girl
hurried after him with a handkerchief which he had inadvertently left
on a chair. "Keep it," said the admirable and faithful servant of
Christ, "it will be useful to you some day." The girl married and was
in fact on the point of dying with her first child. In her extremity,
she called for the handkerchief of the pious Redemptorist. The danger
instantly passed and with it even the pains incidental to her
condition.

But it is above all since his death that the Saint has shown himself
the protector of maternity.

A child born at Oliveto died immediately after Baptism. In their grief,
the parents, Tomaso Ronco and his wife, implored Gerard's help, making
at the same time an application of his relics to their child. Oh,
prodigy! At that instant the babe began to breathe. It was saved.

In 1795, a young woman of Benevento belonging to the Cocca family,
being reduced to extremity, had recourse to Brother Gerard and had a
picture of the Servant of God laid on her head. That night, the Brother
appeared to her in the Redemptorist habit. "Courage," he said, "you are
cured." The next morning the physicians, to their great surprise, found
her in a state of perfect health.

The limits of space which we have prescribed to ourselves force us to
omit a multitude of miraculous deliveries which the biographies of the
holy Brother have handed down to us.

Since his Beatification in January, 1893, numbers of similar
favors have been obtained." [Page 210, St. Gerard Majella, Fr.
Saint-Omer, Tan Books.]